Responding to a couple of different postings with a single reply, sorry...

Yossarian wrote:
Why would comm failure be an emergency? If you follow the FARs both you
and ATC know what you should be doing all the way to your planned
destination. There should be no safety of flight issue so I think you

You need to know what the FARs say so you can parrot it back for your oral exam.
However, there's a huge consensus that the best thing to do when you lose comm
and still have navigation capability is: get on the ground as quickly as
possible using any available nearby approach (assuming IMC, of course). I agree
with this consensus. You're free to decide for yourself.

would have some explaining to do if you "diverted" to a military
airfield.

I didn't hear anyone advocating diverting to a military airfield due to lost comm.


BTW I played phone tag today with some air operations officer, I'll try
him again tomorrow. I was surprised he even called me back, his
secretary wasn't too pleasant. "Well if there's nothing in it for us we
aren't gonna let you do a practice approach, but we'll see what the air
ops officer says."


"Bob Gardner" wrote in
:


You are going to get a clearance to the airport, no matter what you
file. Filing to an IAF is not necessary, IMHO. Comm failure is an
emergency situation, opening the door to doing whatever you want to do
under the PIC privilege.

Bob Gardner

"zatatime" wrote in message
. ..

On 7 Jul 2004 09:53:20 -0700, (Robert M. Gary)
wrote:


Whenever you are going to a semi-busy airport, don't worry about
filing all the way to the IAF, just to the general area. You'll
always get vectors anyway.


What do you when you get to the "general area" while experiencing a
comm failure?

Planning to the IAF gives you procedures to follow if this were to
happen and all parties involved will know what to expect.

Planning is fine, but in general -filing- doesn't do much for you. You fly the
route you are cleared for, not the one you filed. In general, clearances are to
the airport, at least in my part of the USA. You might as well just file to the
airport to begin with.